Why an advertising and production agency that emerged from a failed 90s record
company is raising a glass to rising sales of Peroni.

“We don’t want to be an agency,” says Ian Cassie, creative director of The Bank, an advertising, film and events company most would categorise as exactly that.

“Agencies are not nice. Estate agents; football agents; theatrical agents. They sit there as a third party and make a margin on everyone else’s grief.”

The Bank believes it is different because it creates, produces and delivers all of its own work across a variety of mediums, blending a traditional agency with a production company.

While there’s no shortage of advertising firms that claim to be unique, The Bank’s origins are genuinely unconventional; it emerged from Stiletto, a failing record company Cassie reinvented as a marketing business that gave music away with consumer goods. “Within three years, we were the fourth biggest record label in Britain, making two million Barry Manilow albums for Persil,” he claims. “That didn’t hit it in London’s nightclubs, but we became massive.” The company completed 200 separate record promotions, and its relationship with consumer brands also led it into film promotions and organising conferences. “We were learning our marketing trade, but also doing corporate communications.”

With the recession of the early 90s looming, the company bought the building it was leasing. The combination of a tough trading environment and – more importantly, Cassie claims – a pessimistic revaluation of the property by their bank forced the firm into administration. “They closed us down when we had money in the bank and were profitable. We called ourselves The Bank in loving memory of them,” says Cassie.

The new business, which was founded in 1992, cut its teeth by establishing a relationship with fledgling mobile network Orange.

“We sat there and took it all in and then contributed. We learned about brands, advertising and below the line,” says Cassie. “We don’t claim we made Orange. Everyone else does that. But we were part of it becoming the biggest network in the UK.” The relationship lasted for eight years, with The Bank eventually breaking it off after France Telecom acquired the business in 2001, even though it represented almost 80pc of its business at that point. “It was a different world. We said we didn’t want to work with them anymore.”

Chief executive Matt Cawley, who initially joined the company as a 24-year-old runner, says the decision was “one of the wisest we ever made. It turned our attention to building a sustainable business.”

The last five years have seen headcount at the business, which has revenues of £9m and makes a net profit of around 9pc, grow from 25 to 60 as it has won business from William Hill, AstraZeneca and – despite the company’s sarcastic name – HSBC and Coutts. It also has a film production facility in Cape Town and offices in Qatar that allow it to serve the Middle East.

Having won a tender with SABMiller in 2005, its flagship account is with premium beer Peroni Nastri Azzuro. “It was a small Pizza Express type beer, now it’s in 22 countries,” says Cassie. Sales were up by 29pc last year against a 2pc fall in the premium lager market.

The firm has smartly associated the beer with classic Italian cinema, most famously with a TV advert that paid homage to Fellini’s Le Dolce Vita, which involved securing permission form the Italian government to film in Rome’s Trevi Fountain for the first time since Fellini shot there in 1959. “That’s not taking no for an answer,” says Cassie. “We were initially told we couldn’t, and we didn’t need to because there’s a three quarter size equivalent. But I don’t want 75pc of La Dolce Vita.”

Despite recently launching another high profile campaign for the beer brand by hiring Italian director Gabreile Muccino to shoot an advert and head an 'academy’ that will see young talent work with the Pursuit of Hayypness-director on a short film, Cassie says the most significant thing the company has done is design a glass.

“If they’d have gone with a conventional agency, they would have got a different one for branding, communications, advertising and below the line. We ended up doing all of it. When they said they needed a glass, we designed it in a couple of hours and got it manufactured.”

When used on draft, Cassie claims it inspires an 82pc increase in sales. 100,000 have also been stolen. “We quite like that. Improving the image of the brand is good, but one way or the other it’s important to sell the product.

“The trouble with companies in advertising and communications is that we all have an axe to grind. We don’t – we have about nine axes. As long as you spend the money with us, we don’t mind the format.”

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